Until recently, magnetic fields in the outskirts of galaxies were too faint to be detected. Although it’s still not clear what causes them or how they’re maintained, astronomers have started to create images of their observations of galaxies’ magnetic fields producing beautiful aurora-like effects. See them here. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/images-of-magnetic-fields-in-galaxies…
Tag: the special
Physicists observe competition between magnetic orders
They are as thin as a hair, only a hundred thousand times thinner—so-called two-dimensional materials, consisting of a single layer of atoms, have been booming in research for years. They became known to a wider audience when two Russian-British scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for the discovery of graphene, a building block of graphite. The special…
‘Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet’
The New York Times’ looks at “a deal that controls the internet” — Apple’s agreement to feature Google as the preselected search engine for iPhones, saying America’s Justice Department views it “as a prime example of what prosecutors say are Google’s illegal tactics to protect its monopoly and choke off competition…” The scrutiny of the pact, which was first inked 15…
Astronomers determine distances to 18 dwarf galaxies
Astronomers from the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Nizhnij Arkhyz, Russia, have conducted photometric observations of dwarf galaxies identified by the ALFALFA survey. The results allowed the researchers to determine accurate distances of 18 dwarf galaxies. The study is detailed in a paper published October 1 on the arXiv pre-print repository. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-astronomers-distances-dwarf-galaxies.html…
13 Scientists Troll Scientific Journal With a Bogus Paper about Earth’s Black Hole
“They’re trolling us… we think. But how the hell did this get published?” asks Popular Mechanics. Slashdot reader worldofsimulacra shares their report: Scientists have uncovered a bizarre, indefensible paper that squeaked through peer review at what appears at first pass to be a legitimate medical journal… 13 listed authors from wildly different fields throw together a series of escalating falsehoods. “Recently,…
Lord of the Rings Special Effects Company ‘Weta Digital’ Launches Inquiry Into Toxic Workplace Claims
AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Weta Digital, the special effects company behind the orcs, dragons and battle scenes of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, has launched an independent investigation into allegations of a toxic work culture including sexism, bullying and pornography being shared on its intranet. The investigation was ordered by the company’s majority owners, who include…
Intel Defends AVX-512 Against Critics Who Hope It ‘Dies a Painful Death’
“I hope AVX512 dies a painful death,” Linus Torvalds said last month, “and that Intel starts fixing real problems instead of trying to create magic instructions to then create benchmarks that they can look good on.” Friday PC World published some reactions from Intel:
Torvalds wasn’t the only person to kick AVX-512 in the shins either. Former Intel engineer Francois Piednoel also…
Text Editor Notepad++ Banned In China After ‘Stand With Hong Kong’ Update
The website of Notepad++ is banned in China as of Monday, “obviously due to” its release of editions named “Free Uyghur” and “Stand with Hong Kong,” the source code and text editor announced on Twitter. TechCrunch reports: First released in 2003 by France-based developer Don Ho, free-to-use Notepad++ operates on Windows and supports some 90 languages. In his release notices for…
‘Will 2020 Be The Year Of Rust In The Linux Kernel?’
An intriguing exchange happened on the Linux Kernel Mailing List after a post by Nick Desaulniers, a Google software engineer working on compiling the Linux Kernel with Clang (and LLVM). Hackaday reports:
Nick simply tested the waters for a possible future of Rust within the Linux kernel code base, which is something he’s planning to bring up for discussion in this year’s…
Linus Torvalds Hopes Intel’s AVX-512 ‘Dies A Painful Death’
“Linux creator Linus Torvalds had some choice words today on Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX-512) found on select Intel processors,” reports Phoronix:
In a mailing list discussion stemming from the Phoronix article this week on the compiler instructions Intel is enabling for Alder Lake (and Sapphire Rapids), Linus Torvalds chimed in. The Alder Lake instructions being flipped on in GCC right now…